what to the slave is the 4th of july lesson plan rhetorical analysis weebly
Advisor: James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard Academy, National Humanities Centre Beau.
Copyright National Humanities Center, 2013
What arguments and rhetorical strategies did Frederick Douglass utilise to persuade a northern, white audience to oppose slavery and favor abolition?
Understanding
In the 1850s abolition was not a widely embraced motility in the The states. Information technology was considered radical, extreme, and dangerous. In "What to the Slave Is the Quaternary of July?" Frederick Douglass sought not only to convince people of the wrongfulness of slavery but also to brand abolition more acceptable to Northern whites.
Frederick Douglass, ca 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Fine 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 Complication
Grades 11-CCR complexity band.
For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org.
Text Blazon
Speech, historical, informational.
Click hither for standards and skills for this lesson.
Ten
Common Core State Standards
- ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.v (Analyze in item how a complex master source is structured…)
Advanced Placement Us History
- Fundamental Concept 5.2 (I-B) (Abolitionists…mounted a highly visible campaign against slavery…)
Advanced Placement Language and Composition
- Developing…the ability to evaluate…primary…sources
- Reading nonfiction…to give students opportunities to identify and explain an author's use of rhetorical strategies and techniques
Teacher'southward Note
In add-on to making historical points about nineteenth-century attitudes toward slavery, race, and abolitionism, 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:
- paragraphs 1–3: introduction (exordium)
- paragraphs four–29: narrative or statement of fact (narratio)
- paragraphs xxx–seventy: arguments and counter-arguments (confirmatio and refutatio)
- paragraph 71: decision (peroratio)
We take included notes that explain the function of each department likewise as questions that invite discussion of the ways in which Douglass deploys rhetoric to make his case.
This lesson features 5 interactive activities, which can be accessed by clicking on this icon 
. The kickoff 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 3rd focuses on his use of syllogistic reasoning, while the fourth examines how he makes his instance through emotion and the fifth through illustration.
We recommend assigning the entire text . For shut reading nosotros have analyzed xviii of the speech's seventy-1 paragraphs through fine-grained questions, most of them text-dependent, that will enable students to explore rhetorical strategies and meaning themes. The version below, designed for teachers, provides responses to those questions in the "Text Assay" section. The classroom version , a printable worksheet for use with students, omits those responses and this "Teaching the Text" notation. Terms that appear in blue are defined on hover and in a printable glossary on the last folio of the classroom version. The educatee 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 grouping a set of paragraphs to analyze.
Background
Contextualizing Questions
- What kind of text are we dealing with?
- When was it 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 Order, Frederick Douglass delivered this spoken language on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. It was reported and reprinted in Northern newspapers and was published and sold every bit a twoscore-page pamphlet within weeks of its commitment. 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." Even so, 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 allow Southerners go on to concur slaves, a right they believed was upheld past the Constitution. They only did non want to slavery to spread to areas where information technology did non exist. In this Independence Day oration, Douglass sought to persuade those people to encompass what was then considered the farthermost position of abolition.
He likewise sought to change minds nearly the abilities and intelligence of African Americans. In 1852 many, if non nigh, 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 spoken language gives ample evidence of cognition of rhetoric, history, literature, organized religion, economics, verse, music, constabulary, even advances in technology.
Text Assay
Introduction ('Exordium'): Paragraphs 1–3
Close Reading Questions
1. What are introductions supposed to do?
They seek to engage the interest of listeners and brand them receptive to the speaker'south message. Introductions tin inform listeners of the bailiwick or the purpose of a speech, endeavour to convince them that a topic is important and worthy of their attending, or ingratiate a speaker with the audition.
ii. What does Douglass try to exercise in this introduction? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
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 non take to sketch out his topic or fence 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.
3. Why does he say that "apologies of this sort are mostly considered flat and unmeaning"?
He calls attention to the rhetorical conventions of introductions to point to his audience that in this case they do non apply. He seeks to win their trust past assuring them he is sincere.
four. The word "flat" often means level or polish. In this context how is Douglass defining the word "flat"?
Here the word "apartment" is used to mean dull or superficial. Using the context we can encounter that Douglass intends the connotation of the word "flat" not to be level merely instead to mean something that lacks depth or emotion backside information technology.
five. 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 final paragraph of the introduction, he is an escaped slave. By calling attention to the fact that a slave has been invited to speak on liberty, he employs irony, a strategy he will apply throughout the speech communication to emphasize sure themes.
6. There are contradictions in Douglass'due south self-presentation. What are they? Cite specific instances of them in the text. How can you account for them?
In the first paragraph not merely does Douglass draw his "powers of speech" as "limited," but he as well maintains that he has "limited feel" in exercising them, which he claims to have done importantly in "country school 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 judgement 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 same time establishing his authority as a speaker and justifying his presence on the platform. He continues this balancing deed in the adjacent paragraph when he asserts that he has "little…learning." Nonetheless he deploys the term "exordium," which contradicts the little-learning merits past revealing a written report-acquired vocabulary and a knowledge of formal rhetoric.
7. What expectations do you think a white audition 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 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 among some abolitionists in that location existed the stiff prejudice that African Americans were inferior, indeed, something less than fully human. Douglass's unabridged speech communication is designed to do dispel that belief. In his introduction he begins to do so with that subtle flash of learning revealed in his employ of "exordium." Thus with an ironic flash 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 inferior being.
ane. Mr. President, Friends and Young man Citizens: He who could accost this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger fretfulness than I take. I practice non retrieve e'er to have appeared equally a speaker earlier any assembly more than shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I practice this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of spoken communication. The chore before me is one which requires much previous idea and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are more often than not considered apartment and unmeaning. I trust, yet, that mine will not exist so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The piddling feel I have had in addressing public meetings, in land 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 manner, for it is true that I accept 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 recall I accept of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.
3. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance betwixt this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to exist overcome in getting from the latter to the sometime, 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 training, nor grace my spoken communication with whatsoever loftier sounding exordium. With footling experience and with less learning, I accept 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 y'all.
Narrative or Statement of Fact ('Narratio'): Paragraphs 4–29
Paragraph four
Annotation: Students are likely to be familiar with the function of an introduction in a speech but less then with the office of the narrative section. You might explicate that in an address commemorating an issue, 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 get-go office and, as we shall run into, the second as well. But it besides performs two other of import functions. Looking back on America's revolutionary past, the narration, through implied comparison, condemns America'south slave-holding present. Moreover, it enshrines radical resistance to regime 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 solar day as "plotters of mischief, agitators…rebels, dangerous men."
viii. What is the effect of Douglass'south repetition of the words "your" and "you" in this paragraph and throughout the spoken language?
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 Fourth of July.
9. Why does Douglass experience hopeful nearly America'southward futurity? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
He takes hope from the fact that the country is young, only seventy-six years old. Its destiny and character are not stock-still. Thus information technology may withal modify and carelessness slavery.
ten. What is he suggesting in the "swell streams" metaphor?
If America permits slavery to become a deep and permanent part of its life, the nation might benefit from information technology, or information technology might exist destroyed by it, or it could exist morally drained by it. In the end the metaphor is a alarm almost what might happen if modify does non happen shortly.
11. In the sentence "Were the nation older, the patriot'due south heart 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 contemporary anti-slavery reformers. He begins to brand that equation here. The nation, Douglass tells his audition, is nevertheless young, not set in its way, and thus more susceptible to change. Past inference, were it older, it would be more set in its ways, and the reformer who would want to change those ways, would be sad. But why would a patriot be deplorable? From Douglass's perspective, he would be pitiful for the same reason. In Douglass's view the patriots established a just nation, one that would not tolerate bondage. Were the nation to mature with the injustice of slavery deeply entrenched in it, America would beguile the ideals of the Revolution, and thus the patriot would exist sad.
four. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th 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 act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration as well marks the first of some other twelvemonth of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is at present 76 years erstwhile. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-half dozen years, though a proficient erstwhile age for a man, is merely a mere speck in the life of a nation. Iii score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you lot are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the menstruum of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the nighttime clouds which lower in a higher place the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his centre may well shell lighter at the idea 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 nonetheless give 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 hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. At that place is consolation in the idea that America is young. Keen streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the grade 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 besides rise in wrath and fury, and comport away, on their aroused waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, all the same, gradually menstruum back to the same old aqueduct, and catamenia on every bit serenely as ever. Merely, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and exit nothing backside only the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the completeness-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers and then with nations.
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Paragraph 6
12. According to Douglass, what did the "fathers" do? Cite specific linguistic communication 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 wrong, with the weak confronting the stiff, and with the oppressed confronting the oppressor."
thirteen. Why does Douglass assert 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 audience and to reassure them that, to some degree at least, he participates in the American political tradition.
vi. But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of authorities, 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 equally to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such every bit 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 understanding on my part would non be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, equally to what role I might accept taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say at present that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly piece of cake. Everybody can say information technology; 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 confronting England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did and then were deemed in their solar day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the correct, against the wrong, with the weak confronting the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the ane which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may exist stabbed past the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to continue.
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Paragraph 23
xiv. How would you characterize the construction of the first 4 sentences of this paragraph?
The structure balances ideas through antithesis, a rhetorical device that poses reverse qualities against each other: They were peace men, but they preferred revolution….".
15. How does the structure of those sentences reinforce the primary idea of the paragraph?
The carefully balanced construction reinforces the thought that the founders were themselves balanced, reasonable men.
16. What inference does Douglass want his audience to draw from his portrayal of the founders?
Since he established an identification between the founders and the abolitionists in paragraphs 4 and half dozen, the temperate qualities he ascribes hither to the erstwhile utilise to the latter besides, and this ascription is important considering it addresses the accuse that abolitionists were fanatics and monomaniacs.
17. Ofttimes speakers and writers brand their points equally 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 cull to do so?
Douglass never mentions the fact that many of the fathers were slave owners. This silence allows Douglass to create his ain 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?
Hither you might encourage a contend amid your students. Some will say the omission weakens Douglass'southward argument because it straightforwardly refutes his case. How tin can he say that the "fathers" sided "with the oppressed confronting the oppressor" when many of them were themselves oppressors? Other students may argue that this omission does not weaken his case. Despite existence slaveholders, men like Washington and Jefferson did, in fact, institute a nation built on the ideals of justice and freedom. That many of the founders did non live up to those ideals does not make them whatsoever less compelling. As Douglass says in paragraphs sixteen and seventeen (paragraphs we do 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 office of the speech Douglass argues that just because the "fathers" did not fully cover justice and freedom in 1776 does not mean that his listeners should not in 1852.
23. They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to chains. They were tranquillity men; but they did not shrink from agitating confronting oppression. They showed forbearance; but they knew its limits. They believed in order; but non in the social club of tyranny [authorities rule of absolute power]. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not correct. With them, justice, freedom and humanity were "final;" non slavery and oppression. Y'all may well cherish the retentiveness of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more equally we contrast information technology 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 try to do when making a example. They put forth their arguments and abnegate those of their opponents. To win over an audience, 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 audio sense or high moral graphic symbol, or they may appeal to their emotions. Nosotros offer passages that illustrate all of these strategies.
19. What betoken of view does Douglass denote in this paragraph?
In paragraph iii Douglass alluded to the fact that he had been a slave. In this paragraph his listeners observe the full import of the fact for his speech. Identifying himself with the enslaved, he announces that he volition consider the 4th of July from their perspective.
35. Young man-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose bondage, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that achieve them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right paw forget her cunning, and may my natural language carve to the roof of my oral cavity!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the pop theme, would be treason nigh scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject field, and so fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave's bespeak of view. Continuing, at that place, 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 Quaternary of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the nowadays, the acquit of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. 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, cartel to telephone call in question and to denounce, with all the accent I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery — the nifty sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I tin can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded past prejudice, or who is not at middle a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
Paragraph 36
Activity: Douglass's Use of Syllogistic Reasoning
In paragraph 36 Douglass uses logic to show that slaves are man 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, information technology is just in this circumstance that yous and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public listen. Would you lot fence more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your crusade would be much more probable to succeed. Only, I submit, where all is obviously at that place is nothing to exist argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject practice the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That bespeak is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their regime. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are 70-ii crimes in the Land of Virginia, which, if committed past a black man, (no thing how ignorant he be), subject him to the penalization of expiry; while simply two of the same crimes will subject area a white man to the similar punishment. What is this merely the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible existence? The manhood of the slave is conceded. 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. When you can point 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 ocean, and the reptiles that clamber, shall exist unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, so will I debate with you that the slave is a man!
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 and so past listing examples of some of things slaves do that are washed by others also: ploughing, planting, edifice, writing, raising children, etc.
37. For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is information technology 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 contumely, atomic number 26, copper, silver and gold; that, while nosotros are reading, writing and cyphering, acting equally clerks, merchants and secretaries, having amid us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while nosotros are engaged in all way of enterprises common to other men, digging aureate in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the loma-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, to a higher place all, confessing and worshipping the Christian'due south God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are chosen upon to prove that we are men!
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Paragraph 39
22. How does Douglass maintain the social club and coherence of the outset sentence of this paragraph?
He employs parallelism, a blazon of organization in which a writer places similar ideas in a similar structure. 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 result of the repetition of infinitive phrases ("to make," "to rob," "to work," etc.) in the first sentence?
They establish a rhythm that emphasizes each indignity and heighten the emotional touch of the argument.
39. What, am I to argue that it is incorrect 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 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 argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
40. What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did non establish it; that our doctors of divinity [preachers, ministers] are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot exist divine! Who can reason on such a proffer? They that can, 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 religion. Here yous will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You lot know what is a swine-drover [herder]? I will testify you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see ane of these homo flesh-jobbers [flesh-sellers], armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a visitor 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 sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his claret-chilling oaths, equally he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and grey. Cast one glance, if you delight, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the baby in her arms. See, too, that girl of 13, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the female parent from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have almost consumed their strength; all of a sudden you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the concatenation rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to accept torn its way to the center of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the adult female yous 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. Nourish the sale; come across men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, distressing 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 U.s.a..
Paragraphs 46–48
24. What strategy of argument does Douglass employ in this section of his speech communication?
Hither Douglass established his own moral authority to speak on the issue of slavery past citing his ain experience, by establishing himself every bit reliable witness with first-mitt information.
46. I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-merchandise is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell's Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of man flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down 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 town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming "hand-bills," headed Greenbacks FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. E'er set to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a unmarried carte; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother past bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.
47. The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and bulldoze them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison house to the ship, they are unremarkably driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.
48. In the deep however 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 eye 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 find one 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 oral communication?
Here Douglass offers the strongest analogy of the ways in which America is imitation to the ideals it has set for itself.
26. What is the thesis of this paragraph?
The means 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 reverberate the thesis of the paragraph?
Of the 11 sentences in this paragraph, ten exhibit a parallel compound structure in which the first clause identifies an ideal and the post-obit clause refutes America's claim to it. Each sentence begins with a slightly accusatory "you lot" and so pivots at a conjunction or a word functioning as one — "while," "but," "yet" — that suggests contradiction.
63. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican faith, are flagrantly inconsistent. Yous avowal of your beloved of freedom, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two keen 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 invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from away, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and cascade out your money to them like water; merely the fugitives from your own land you advertise, chase, arrest, shoot and impale. You glory in your refinement and your universal education notwithstanding yous maintain a organization as cruel and dreadful every bit ever stained the character of a nation — a arrangement begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. Y'all shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to wing to arms to vindicate her [Republic of hungary'due south] cause confronting her oppressors; but, in regard to the 10 thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public soapbox! You are all on fire at the mention of freedom for France or for Ireland; only are as cold every bit an iceberg at the thought of freedom for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a arrangement which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing [a coin formerly used in Peachy Great britain] from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath allowable all men, everywhere to love one another; withal you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you "concord these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed past their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, amidst these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" and yet, you concur securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, "is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose," a seventh part 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, statement by analogy, which is explored in this action.
Note: This paragraph is an important part of Douglass's refutatio and as such deserves careful attention. Not only does he address a powerful justification for the continuation of slavery — the belief that information technology is protected by the Constitution — but he also asserts a controversial theory virtually Ramble interpretation.
68. Fellow-citizens! there is no thing in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be and then ruinously imposed upon, equally that of the pro-slavery grapheme of the Constitution. In that musical instrument I concur there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful matter; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery amidst them? Is it at the gateway [the preamble]? or is it in the temple [the body of the Constitution]? It is neither. While I do not intend to contend this question on the nowadays occasion, let me ask, if information technology 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 tin anywhere be found in it. What would exist thought of an instrument [legal agreement, in this case a deed], drawn up, legally fatigued upwardly, for the purpose of entitling [giving ownership to] the city of Rochester to a tract [slice] of country, in which no mention of land was fabricated? Now, at that place are sure rules of interpretation, for the proper agreement of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are apparently, mutual-sense rules, such as yous and I, and all of u.s., tin can empathise and utilise, without having passed years in the 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 opinion of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to utilise all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing ane. Without this right, 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 attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the Constitution, in its words, is evidently and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our swain-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the primal constabulary, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every denizen 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 sound lawyers, so regard the Constitution. I take it, therefore, that information technology is not presumption in a private citizen to form an stance of that instrument.
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Conclusion ('Peroratio'): Paragraph 71
Paragraph 71
Note: Conclusions are important. Ask your students how they function and what they should practise. The terminal words an audience hears, they often linger and shape the impression of an entire speech. Traditionally, speakers employ them to do four things: leave the audition with a favorable stance, emphasize cardinal points, stimulate an advisable emotional response, or summarize the argument. Douglass does not emphasize key points or recapitulate his arguments. Rather, he seeks to bandage his case for abolitionism in a favorable calorie-free 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 state"?
Even though he has merely delivered a dark and stinging denunciation of the country, 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 Declaration of Independence. For Douglass those ideals, if the nation tin can live up to them, make the Us, despite its flaws, a place of promise and hope for the enslaved. He too looks to the hereafter 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 practice the same under it — will spread intelligence, enlightenment, and moral progress throughout the world.
71. Let me to say, in conclusion, yet the night picture I have this day presented of the country of the nation, I do non despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is non shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, go out off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Annunciation of Independence, the groovy principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand up in the aforementioned relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now close itself upwards from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could exist done. Long established community of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then bars and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a modify has now come over the affairs of flesh. Walled cities and empires take become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well equally on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, simply link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday circuit. Space is insufficiently annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other. The far-off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Permit there be Lite," has non yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in gustation, sport or avarice, can at present hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled pes of People's republic of china must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. "Federal democratic republic of ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God." In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every eye bring together in proverb it:
God speed the yr of jubilee
The wide world o'er!
When from their galling chains prepare free,
Th' oppressed shall vilely curve the genu,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes, no more:—
That twelvemonth will come, and Liberty's reign,
To human his plundered rights once again
Restore.
God speed the mean solar day when human claret
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each render for evil, good—
Non accident for accident:—
That day will come, all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on world
Shall exercise a lordly ability,
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-house the thrall
Become forth.
Until that year, 24-hour interval, 60 minutes arrive,
With head and heart and hand I'll strive,
To break 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,
Be driven.
Image: Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass, ca. 1855 (creator unknown). Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, The Rubel Collection, Partial 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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