Yea! Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner 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, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christians God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. That point is conceded already. 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. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. [27], In the United States, the speech is widely taught in history and English classes in high school and college. "Meaning of the Fourth of July to a Negro" by Bridget Durham The Fourth of July is a day of celebration for many Americans because on July 4th, 1776, America declared independence from Britain and said that everyone was free under the US government, right? Douglass says that if the residents of America believe that slaves are "men",[20]:342 they should be treated as such. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! 2. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. [5] Many copies of one section of it, beginning in paragraph 32, have been circulated online. Students also viewed 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 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 command, everything that serves to perpetuate slaverythe great sin and shame of America! See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Nevertheless, Douglass claims that this can change. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Rhetoricians R. L. Heath and D. Waymer refer to this as the "paradox of the positive" because it highlights how something positive and meant to be positive can also exclude individuals. He implored the Rochester, N.Y., audience to think about the ongoing oppression of Black Americans during a holiday celebrating . Assignment in book chapter School Alief Early College High School Course English language and literature (ELL2002) Uploaded by God Academic year2021/2022 Helpful? Douglass, Frederick, ed. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. The Bible addresses all such persons as scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting. nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, the slave plantation, from which I escaped, and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you, This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. The power is co-extensive with the Star-Spangled Banner and American Christianity. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. In this respect, Douglass's views converged with that of Abraham Lincoln's[25] in that those politicians who were saying that the Constitution was a justification for their beliefs in regard to slavery were doing so dishonestly. One of the parts of the speech that resonates with me the most is when Douglass says: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? He expresses his belief in the speech that he and other slaves are fighting the same fight in terms of wishing to be free that White Americans, the ancestors of the white people he is addressing, fought seventy years earlier. Essentially, Douglass criticizes his audience's pride for a nation that claims to value freedom though it is composed of people who continuously commit atrocities against Blacks. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. The drove moves tardily. They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. Text Frederick Douglass, " What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper. You live and must die, and you must do your work. Douglass then discusses the internal slave trade in America. Summary: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" In "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?", otherwise known as "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro," Frederick Douglassoutlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. Stauffer, John. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Is that a question for Republicans? Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. For who is there so cold, that a nations sympathy could not warm him? I will show you a man-drover. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. In an 1868 speech, he said, No man should be excluded from the government on the basis of his color, no woman on account of her sex. This act forced citizens to report people who had escaped their enslavement and escaped to a free state, under punishment of a fine or imprisonment. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abrahams great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? To find out what elements make the speech 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' The Act also denied suspected slaves trial by jury or even the ability to testify on their own behalf in court. PDF. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. 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 is still in the impressible stage of her existence. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. They inhabit all our Southern States. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. was delivered in the decade preceding the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865 and achieved the abolition of slavery. To the slave, Douglass tells the audience, "your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license [for enslaving blacks] . They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. In the end, Douglass wants to keep his hope and faith in humanity high. I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shoutWe have Washington to our father.Alas! It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. The manhood of the slave is conceded. your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. R, R. Raymond) on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slaves redemption from his chains.One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. We need individual events like reading Douglass, but we also need to be thinking about ways to extend this conversation over the long term. that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nations jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? He also wrote a letter to Ida B. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. He became a leader in the abolitionist movement, which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. I hold that every American citizen has a fight to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. A major theme of the speech is how America is not living up to its proclaimed beliefs. Repetition Parallel structure ethos pathos Analogy Simile/Metaphor Rhetorical Question logos Part 2 - Slavery in America Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called uponto speak here today? If youre not a person of color, its one thing to go to a couple of events or protests, or to read a few articles and move on. The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. 4th period Mrs. Landrew Fredrick Douglass Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became a prominent activist, author and public speaker. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. Douglass then pivots to the present, stating that "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future". Yea! What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? With this product, you can choose to either have your students read the entire speech and annotate and analyze Douglass' rhetorical devices or you can choose to have your students read shorter excerpts from the speech and do an abbreviated annotation and analysis of rhetorical devices. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. You 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; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. Over 150,000 persons were sold between 1820 and 1830, and over 300,000 were sold between 1850 and 1860.[15]. that it should be so; yet so it is. There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a mans liberty, hear only his accusers!In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. [4], Noted for its biting irony and bitter rhetoric, and acute textual analysis of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Christian Bible, the speech is among the most widely known of all of Douglass's writings. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. I am not that man. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. ARI . "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" remains one of the most effective and poignant condemnations of slavery in the canon of American abolitionist literature, a tribute to the moral character and oratorical skills of Frederick Douglass. [4], The speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States. or is it in the temple? What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass annotation? What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor. I will not. there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In July of 1852, Frederick Douglass prepares a speech known as The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. 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